Finishing Easel 

Applying a finish to a door or flat project lying on a sawhorse can literally 
be a pain. So to ease the strain on my back and make it less tiring, I built 
an adjustable "easel" that holds the workpiece at a comfortable height, a
you can see in the photo at right. 
 
The main parts of the easel are a pair of uprights made from "two-by" 
material, see drawing below. These uprights have a couple notches that 
interlock quickly with the sawhorse. A rectangular notch in the bottom of 
each upright fits behind a stretcher screwed to the legs of the sawhorse, 
see detail 'b.' And an angled notch in the back edge determines the s
of the easel.

 

 

To keep the uprights from tipping, I added a pair of long dowels. By 
gluing and screwing one end of each dowel to the same upright, you can 
slide the other one on the dowels to adjust the easel for projects of 
different widths.

 

s 

lope 

 

Finally, a small dowel in the front edge of each upright 
supports the workpiece. To avoid wet finish sticking to the 
easel, I cut a piece of PVC pipe in half (lengthwise) on the 
band saw and then screwed one piece to each upright, see 
detail 'a.'